Kael stared at the legal template glowing softly on the blue screen.
I leave my boots to [______] he thought dryly, and my crippling debt to the Academy.
He swiped the screen away, shifting his attention back to the data slate in his hands.
The Main Bracket roster was a list of walking natural disasters.
The A-rank he was slated to fight tomorrow, Elias Thorne—no relation to the registry analyst, just another branch of the suffocating aristocratic tree—had an evolution called Absolute Zero.
“He can flash-freeze the moisture in a person’s lungs from thirty feet away,” Mori said, pacing the length of the suite.
“Elias doesn’t even use the arena floor.
He creates pillars of ice and fights from the air.
You can’t throw dirt at him, Kael.
You can’t vibrate his internal organs if your own blood is frozen solid.”
“I am aware,” Kael muttered, scrolling past Elias’s terrifying stats.
He tapped the bottom of the slate, opening the Academy’s official tournament bylaws.
It was a labyrinth of archaic Rank Authority rules, full of clauses protecting the nobility and punishing the lower ranks.
Kael’s eyes scanned the dense, boring text at a speed that would have given a normal person a migraine.
His Faster Brain wasn’t just good for dodging daggers; it was incredible at processing data.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Mori stopped pacing and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“But I think we need to forge a medical discharge.
I can alter your bloodwork.
I’ll say the kinetic shockwave from Valerius ruptured your mana core.
It’s a career-ending injury.
They’ll expel you, but at least you’ll be alive.”
“If I get expelled, I lose access to the Academy archives,” Kael said, not looking up from the slate.
“And I lose access to the high-density monster cores you guys keep in the vaults.
I need those.”
“You want to rob the vault?
Kael, you are going to die tomorrow at noon!”
“Not if I’m not in the arena,” Kael said softly.
He tapped the slate, highlighting a tiny, buried paragraph in the bylaws, and turned the screen toward her.
Mori squinted at the text.
“Article 4, Section 9…
The Vanguard Clause?”
“Read it,” Kael said.
Mori leaned in, reading aloud.
“‘Any provisional student drafted into the Main Bracket may formally decline their placement, provided they volunteer for an immediate, high-risk resource extraction dive in the Deep Dungeon beneath the Academy.
This conscription serves as an equivalent display of loyalty to the Rank Authority.'”
Mori went pale.
She looked at Kael in sheer horror.
“You want to invoke the Vanguard Clause?
Kael, that isn’t a loophole.
That’s a death sentence designed for disgraced nobles who want to die with honor.
The Deep Dungeon isn’t a controlled training ground.
It’s an active, Class-3 Cataclysm fissure.
The monsters down there haven’t been cleared in decades.
It’s where we send E-rank miners to die for mana crystals.”
“It’s where we what?”
“It’s a suicide mission!”
Kael closed the slate.
“Monsters don’t have aristocratic egos, Mori.
They don’t have political factions or daddies who buy their brackets.
They just have teeth.
“It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet,” Kael corrected quietly.
Mori just stared at him.
She didn’t understand.
She couldn’t understand.
She thought Kael survived by being clever, by playing the angles and using physics to trick high-rankers.
She didn’t know that his body was actively starving for raw, unfiltered monster mana.
She didn’t know that putting him in a dungeon full of undocumented, lethal beasts wasn’t a punishment.
It was exactly what the System needed.
The translucent blue screen materialized right between Kael and Mori.
[Vanguard Clause registered.
Location: Deep Dungeon.
Status: Unmapped and highly lethal.]
[Scanning localized mana density…]
[Density is 400% higher than surface level.
This is a very dark, very dangerous basement.]
[Host is advised to pack a flashlight.
And perhaps a very large sword.]
Kael stood up, ignoring the ache in his shoulder.
He grabbed a pen from Mori’s desk, digitally signed his name on the Vanguard Clause waiver, and handed the slate back to the Principal’s perfect daughter.
“Submit that to the committee,” Kael said, walking toward the door.
“I need to go find a weapon.”
“Where are you going?” Mori demanded, holding the slate like it was a live grenade.
“To the provisional armory,” Kael said, pausing with his hand on the brass doorknob.
He looked back over his shoulder.
“If I’m going to spend the next week in a cave, I might as well dress for the occasion.”